Subshells
by TheDarkestShinobi
Summary: There was no middle ground. No way they could compromise and meet in the middle. Like the subshells of an electron.  There could be no physical transition, only collision.


**TheDarkestShinobi:** I was told any true TBBT fan would tell me that Leslie would never work with Sheldon, and I realize this may be true. That being said I wanted to put this out there anyway. This was originally going to be part of my Oedipus Complex story but at my BETA's opinion will be left out.

**Story Start:**

"Dr. Dumbass."

Sheldon's eyes narrowed as he looked up from his laptop to see none other than Leslie Winkle in front of him. He paused, saying nothing until he shook his head in disdain. It was bad enough she would never benefit the science community, now she was holding him back from his work with her interruptions.

"Well?"

"I'm publishing a paper." She paused suddenly unsure before reminding herself that she was Leslie Winkle and however brilliant Sheldon could be he was still a dumbass. She took two confident strides forward before handing him a paper, or at least thrusting one in his direction.

He looked at it but didn't take it. He looked back up to her before looking back to his laptop dismissing her. She couldn't believe she once looked up to this man.

"It's a paper about String Theory."

"Are you still trying to disprove it? You're attempts are futile as I have already proved it."

"Have you accounted for the Landscape of false vacuums?" Sheldon paused typing and stared at his screen.

That was the same thing Dennis Kim threw in his face before.

"Drat."

"Dumbass." She paused and looked to her paper. She was trying to make peace but he was just too irritating and cocky for his own good. Someone had to knock him down. He may be a doctor, may be the one in the university to get the Nobel, but he was still a dumbass. She smirked, look who was better after all.

"I've already solved it. I have reduced it to include 10^3 possibilities."

"That renders one thousand possibilities, Leslie," he didn't even sound mildly impressed, had she been someone else she might have been insulted. "That's hardly worth a full published paper."

"I do believe so, being as the original field had over ten to the five hundredth power."

"So, other than disprove your own theory, have you managed to actually accomplish something in your years working for this university?"

It worked, he was interested. He attacked her work because he knew she was right and would never admit it.

"Plenty, have you managed to prove String Theory yet? I do recall that being the only thing you worked on."

"In fact I have." He smirked as he stood; she was silent as he ranted. Already? Did he already do it?

"I will be known as Dr. Cooper to all and they will regard me in textbooks, in mockery smart kids will no longer be called Einstein but Cooper." He smirked leaning against his desk with a hand on his chin.

"Odd." He turned towards her. "I don't see a reason for anyone remembering a Leslie Winkle."

Her fist clenched around the twenty page bundle in her hands. The paper crinkled under her pressure. Annoying. This way the reason she hated him. The reason they could never and would never get along.

"Some of the best scientists never need recognition. They know they are brilliant without lesser minds telling them that, and you're still a dumbass."

She turned and walked out of his office. He hit a sore spot and all she had to retort was dumbass? She knew he was right. She had proved some of his work by simply proving that the other possibilities were impossible. Her loops could not account for electrons stopping to exist in the third and suddenly release energy and exist in the second. There was no transition, no middle point. It was sort of like them.

She guessed she was an N=3 and he was an N=2.

She dropped the paper in his mailbox. She knew him, and he would never admit it, but he was looking up her paper now or planning to try to sneak into her office later to procure it.

This paper would exist for her and then it would exist for him. There was no middle ground. No way they could compromise and meet in the middle. Like the subshells of an electron. There could be no physical transition, only collision. Electrons and quarks were what it was all about with them.

Sheldon and she were equally brilliant and she hated to admit it, so she called him a dumbass. It was the only palpable insult she had. Science was not the only thing in which they matched and opposed. She was pretty sure she was close to proving Quantum Loop theory when her data turned up wrong. It disproved everything she thought was true. The data pointed straight towards String Theory without proving anything she could publish.

She altered her experiment remembering a conversation she overheard between dumbass and the new kid. There had to be less than that many possibilities, even this only had a million. She adjusted her goggles and set to work. Her results had gotten her somewhere but her desire to get closer to the truth remained. She hadn't done enough. Dr. Gablehouser gave her the week off to

celebrate her paper's release but she still came to work, she was hungry for the truth.

She knew she had to go to Sheldon and rub it in his face that she discovered something he did not.

Maybe, she thought, Gablehouser would make them work on string theory together. She knew it was a slim chance. She would hate to work with him, but even more than that, she'd hate to be forgotten. _"I don't see a reason for anyone remembering a Leslie Winkle." _This was a man's world and she needed to leave her mark. It was Sheldon but, if he could help her find the truth; _or her help him_ she realized, then it would be worth dealing with him. It would have to be.

She shook her head. They were more like two electrons in an orbital. Racing each other in opposite directions, so close but so far, and every once in a while they would collide before racing apart and away from each other but around the same nucleus, the same goal. Science, it was what held them together and caused them to clash.

No one knows why yet, but it will remain a mystery and it will keep happening forever.


End file.
